i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, my sincere gratitude goes to the Almighty God, Ida

Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa for His blessings, guidance, love, health during the

writing of this paper could be completed.

My deep gratitude goes to Prof. Dr. dr. Ketut Suastika, Sp.PD.KEMD, the

Rector of Udayana University. My sincere appreciation is sent to the Dean of

Faculty of Arts, Udayana University, Prof. Dr. Ni Luh Sutjiati Beratha, M.A.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my main supervisor, Dr. I

Made Rajeg, M.Hum., for his guidance, kindness, and providing necessary

information in completing this paper. My special appreciation goes to my second

supervisor, Drs. I Ketut Wandia, M.A., M.App.Ling for his feedback and support

in writing this paper.

My appreciation extends to the head of English Department, Dr. Dra. Ida

Ayu Made Puspani, M.Hum. Thanks also go to all lecturers who have shared their

knowledge to me.

I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation go to my strongest

father and perfect mother who can be my best friends, supporters, and sun shines

in my life. To my brother thanks for his support. I also send my great thanks to all

my friends.

Denpasar, January 2017

Ni Wayan Manik Septianiari Putri

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ABSTRACT

The paper entitled The Study of Adjective Admirable and Its Near Synonyms in Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is aimed at identifying the distribution of the use of admirable and its near synonyms commendable, laudable, and estimable. Furthermore, it is aimed at explaining the collocational structure as well as exploring their meaning. The data were taken from COCA that contains 520 million words. It covers five genres spoken, fiction, magazine, newspaper, and academic. Documentation method was used in collecting data. Meanwhile, the methods used in analyzing data were quantitative and qualitative. Furthermore, theories used were theory of collocation by Benson, et al and supported by Quirk, et al as well as theory of meaning by Leech.

The results of analysis show that admirable is the highest frequency of use which has 500 usages and the lowest is estimable which has 177 usages. In the first type of lexical collocation, adjective + noun, the highest frequency of use is admirable + noun. It has 457 usages. Meanwhile, the lowest is estimable + noun which has 96 usages. Furthermore, another type of lexical collocation is adverb + adjective. In this type, the highest frequency of use is adverb + admirable which has 351 usages; while the lowest is adverb + estimable which has 26 usages. Furthermore, attributive adjective appears in the first type of lexical collocation. Meanwhile, attributive and predicative appear in the second type of lexical collocation. The meanings found are collocative and conceptual meaning.

Keywords: Synonym, Adjective, Corpus

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LIST OF PICTURES

Number Title Page

Picture 1. The Concordance of Admirable as the KWIC in COCA 6

Picture 2. The Collocation of Admirable 7

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LIST OF TABLES

Number Title Page

Table 1. The Distribution of Synonymous Adjectives 23

Table 2. Adjective + Noun in COCA 25

Table 3. Adverb + Adjective in COCA 40

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

COCA = Corpus of Contemporary American English

SPOK = Spoken

FIC = Fiction

MAG = Magazine

NEWS = Newspaper

ACAD = Academic

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................... i

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................ ii

LIST OF PICTURES ................................................................................................ iii

LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................... iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................... v

TABLE OF CONTENTS ......................................................................................... vi

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION .............................................................................. 1

1.1 Background of the Study ....................................................................................... 1

1.2 Problems of the Study ............................................................................................ 3

1.3 Aims of the Study .................................................................................................. 3

1.4 Scope of Discussion ............................................................................................... 4

1.5 Research Method ................................................................................................... 4

1.5.1 Data Source ...................................................................................................... 4

1.5.2 Method and Technique of Collecting Data ...................................................... 5

1.5.3 Method and Technique of Analyzing Data ...................................................... 7

CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE, CONCEPTS, AND

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ........................................................................... 9

2.1 Review of Literature .............................................................................................. 9

2.2 Concepts ............................................................................................................... 12

2.2.1 The Concept of Synonym .............................................................................. 12

2.2.2 The Concept of Collocation ........................................................................... 13

2.2.3 The Concept of Meaning................................................................................ 13

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2.2.4 The Concept of Adjective ............................................................................. 13

2.2.5 The Concept of Corpus .................................................................................. 13

2.3 Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................ 14

2.3.1 Theory of Collocation .................................................................................... 14

2.3.2 Theory of Meaning ........................................................................................ 18

CHAPTER III STUDY OF ADJECTIVE ADMIRABLE AND ITS NEAR

SYNONYMS IN COCA ......................................................................................... 22

3.1 Overview .............................................................................................................. 22

3.2 The Distribution of Synonymous Adjectives Admirable, Commendable,

Laudable, and Estimable Found in COCA ................................................................ 23

3.3 The Collocational Structure of Synonymous Adjectives Admirable,

Commendable, Laudable, and Estimable Found in COCA ....................................... 24

3.3.1 Adjective + Noun ........................................................................................... 24

3.3.1.1 Admirable + Noun ................................................................................ 26

3.3.1.2 Commendable + Noun .......................................................................... 29

3.3.1.3 Laudable + Noun ................................................................................... 33

3.3.1.4 Estimable + Noun ................................................................................. 36

3.3.2 Adverb + Adjective ........................................................................................ 39

3.3.2.1 Adverb + Admirable ............................................................................. 41

3.3.2.2 Adverb + Commendable ....................................................................... 44

3.3.2.3 Adverb + Laudable ............................................................................... 48

3.3.2.4 Adverb + Estimable .............................................................................. 51

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3.4 The Meaning of Synonymous Adjectives Admirable, Commendable,

Laudable, and Estimable Found in COCA ................................................................ 55

3.4.1 The Meaning of Adjective Admirable .......................................................... 55

3.4.2 The Meaning of Adjective Commendable ..................................................... 58

3.4.3 The Meaning of Adjective Laudable ............................................................. 61

3.4.4 The Meaning of Adjective Estimable ............................................................ 63

CHAPTER IV CONCLUSION .............................................................................. 67

BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDIX

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Language is a tool that can be used to communicate and express the

meaning. According to Hurford (1983:1), the study of meaning in language is

called Semantics. English is an International language. Many people around the

world use English as their language, although they come from different countries

and cultures. It means that they are able to understand each other. According to

Crystal (2007), English has a larger number of words. It can be known as antonym

and synonym.

In all languages, antonym and synonym have important role. It means that

by using antonym and synonym, people can improve their vocabularies, especially

English. According to Hornby (2010:54), antonym is a word that means opposite

of another word, for example happy and sad. Meanwhile, synonym is a word or

expression that has the same or nearly the same meaning as another in the same

language (Hornby, 2010:1515). An example is admirable and commendable.

People who speak English use different words to express the things for the

same meaning, for example, in British, people use football in order to describe a

game which played by two teams of 11 players. However, in American English

use soccer. Although they use the different words, the meaning of those words is

similar. In addition, people use pedagogue in a formal situation and teacher in

informal situation that refers to a person who likes to teach people things,

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especially because they think they know more than other people (Hornby,

2010:1081).

Synonym becomes the main topic in this study. It concerns with the

synonym of an adjective admirable. There are some synonyms of admirable such

as commendable, worthy, praiseworthy, deserving, laudable, and estimable

(Webster’s New World (TM) Roget’s A-Z Thesaurus). Furthermore, this study

focuses on the synonyms of admirable which have the suffix –able, they are

commendable, laudable, and estimable. Therefore, there are four words that are

analyzed in this study.

Synonym is a very interesting topic to be discussed. English learners need

many various words in order to improve their vocabularies. It can be used in

written forms such as an essay. This example of written forms, essay, will be

more beautiful with various words which have similar meaning.

Adjective admirable is chosen in this study because this adjective has

many synonyms. However, the synonyms of adjective admirable with suffix –

able are analyzed. The four synonymous adjectives admirable, commendable,

laudable, and estimable are used in this study in order to see the frequency of use,

to identify their collocational structure that consists of words they collocate with

and functions. According to Quirk, et al (1985) adjectives have their own

syntactic functions, namely predicative and attributive. Furthermore, the four

synonymous adjectives are used to explore their meanings found in all genres

(spoken, fiction, magazine, newspaper, and academic) in COCA.

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1.2 Problems of the Study

Based on the above explanation, the problems can be formulated as

follows:

1. What the distribution of the four synonymous adjectives admirable,

commendable, laudable, and estimable used in COCA?

2. What the collocational structure of the four synonymous adjectives

admirable, commendable, laudable, and estimable used in COCA?

3. What the meaning of the four synonymous adjectives admirable,

commendable, laudable, and estimable used in COCA?

1.3 Aims of the Study

The aims of this study are:

1. To identify the distribution of the four synonymous adjectives admirable,

commendable, laudable, and estimable used in COCA.

2. To explain the collocational structure of the four synonymous adjectives

admirable, commendable, laudable, and estimable used in COCA.

3. To explore the meaning of the four synonymous adjectives admirable,

commendable, laudable, and estimable used in COCA.

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1.4 Scope of Discussion

The discussion in this study is focused on:

1. The distribution of the four synonymous adjectives admirable,

commendable, laudable, and estimable in all genres in COCA.

2. The collocational structures of the four synonymous adjectives admirable,

commendable, laudable, and estimable are explained by theory proposed

by Benson, et al (1986). Based on the theory, this study focused on the two

types of lexical collocations, namely adjective followed by noun and

adverb followed by adjective. Furthermore, it is supported by theory

proposed by Quirk, et al (1985) in order to see the syntactic functions of

adjective.

3. The meaning of the four synonymous adjectives admirable, commendable,

laudable, and estimable found in COCA is analyzed by theory of meaning

proposed by Leech (1974).

1.5 Research Method

The research method in this study consists of three components: data

source, method and technique of collecting data, and method and technique of

analyzing data.

1.5.1 Data Source

The data source used in this study was taken from Corpus of

Contemporary American English (COCA). This corpus was created by Mark

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Davies of Brigham Young University in 2008 containing 520 (five hundred and

twenty) million words from 1990 until 2015.

Corpus is the valid and objective data that can be used as the data source.

There are many sources in corpus like from fiction, magazine, newspaper, and

academic words. Corpus is an excellent media because it does not take long time

to collect the data.

1.5.2 Method and Technique of Collecting Data

Documentation method was used in collecting data. The method was

applied by accessing COCA on corpus.byu.edu/coca/.

Two techniques used in collecting data are Key Word In Context (KWIC)

technique and note-taking technique. KWIC technique allows for concordance

(McKinnon, 1993). The key words are alphabetized mechanically and produced

with the aid of electronic computer rapidly by using KWIC in COCA. KWIC

technique is used in this study in order to see the distribution of the four

synonymous adjectives. First, the four synonymous adjectives admirable,

commendable, laudable, and estimable were included into KIWC in COCA

alternately and set HITS #100. Second, checking [Sections] menu and choosing

the genres spoken, fiction, magazine, newspaper, and academic alternately. Third,

clicking KWIC above the [Sections] menu. Furthermore, note-taking the

frequency of use of the four synonymous adjective based on genres.

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Picture 1. The Concordance of Admirable as the KWIC in COCA

In order to see the lexical collocations of the four synonymous adjectives,

the term KWIC in COCA was used. First, the four synonymous adjectives

admirable, commendable, laudable, and estimable were included into KWIC in

COCA with some keywords alternately, such as to find out adjective admirable

followed by noun, it should include admirable [nn*] or adverb followed by

adjective admirable, it should include [r*] admirable and set HITS #100. Second,

checking [Sections] menu and choosing the genres spoken, fiction, magazine,

newspaper, and academic alternately. Third, clicking KWIC above the [Sections]

menu Furthermore, note-taking the frequency of use of the lexical collocation

based on genres.

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Picture 2. The Collocation of Admirable

1.5.3 Method and Technique of Analyzing Data

Quantitative and qualitative methods were applied in analyzing data.

Quantitative method was used in order to calculate the data; meanwhile,

qualitative method was used in order to give an actual explanation descriptively.

For calculating the data, the collected data were tabulated into table based on

genres. The collected data were analyzed based on the theory proposed by

Benson, et al (1986) in order to see the collocational structure that consists of the

two types of the lexical collocation and supported by Quirk, et al (1985) in order

to explain the syntactic functions of adjective. Furthermore, theory proposed by

Leech (1974) was used in order to explore the meanings.

The collected data was analyzed through some steps in order to see the

distribution. First, putting the four synonymous adjectives and five genres in

COCA into a table. Furthermore, making explanation descriptively based on the

frequency.

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The data was analyzed through some steps in order to see the collocation

and meaning. First, putting data into table in order to see the frequency of the two

types of lexical collocations, namely adjective followed by noun and adverb

followed by adjective. Second, making explanation descriptively based on the

frequency. Third, the examples in the analysis were presented randomly. Fourth,

the data were classified into the syntactic functions whether they belong to

predicative or attributive. Finally, the collected data was analyzed depending on

their meanings.